Siftables Prove Tech Inspires

The TED conference always contains some wonderful people spreading great ideas.  Though few of us will ever be able to attend the exclusive and expensive conference, the TED website is an amazing place to catch up on what you missed.

Not only are the videos very well shot to capture the speaker and the visuals but they are downloadable in a number of formats.

Catching up on the most recent TED of last month, I was blown away by this demo of a new computer prototype called Siftables.  I won’t even try to explain, so watch the video below.  The best part is listening to the crowd reactions.

These videos should be shown in every high school in the nation.  Not only is it inspiring to see and hear great ideas but it is vital that students see the impact those ideas have on the people in the audience.  Thinkers, programmers and inventors can be rock stars, too.

Miro – In Case You Didn’t Know

One approach to web video is to create player applications that worked outside of your browser to either stream or download video content for viewing.  One of the most-publicized of these is Joost (though it is not looking like it’s going to live up to expectations), which uses streaming to deliver video.

Another application, the open-source and free Miro player takes a slightly different approach, allowing users to subscribe to videos which are downloaded and stored in the background for viewing anytime.

Mashable has a quick story on Miro’s offering a pre-packaged content bundles:

“We previously brought you word of Miro’s partnerships with various content producers in building video channels. Revision3 and TED are couple of brand names that have joined with Miro to deliver clips and shows to new viewers. Now Miro has put together a duo of collections: one having to do with the culinary arts and another targeted at those looking to consume Christian-toned material. Both are available at Miro’s website now.”

If you haven’t experienced Miro yet it is worth a download.